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Three cups of coffee a day could help keep diabetes away.

Drinking more coffee may slightly reduce your risk of diabetes, and people who drink three or more cups appear to be at the lowest risk of all, an American study has suggested.Researchers at Harvard University’s School of Public Health analysed data on more than 120,000 people’s coffee consumption over several years. They found that those who increased their intake by more than a cup a day over a four-year period had an 11 per cent lower chance of developing diabetes in the following years.

Those who had consistently higher coffee consumption – of three or more cups a day – had a risk which was 37 per cent lower than people who consistently drank one or fewer cups a day, researchers found.

The study is the latest to suggest a possible link between coffee and reduced diabetes risk and while the researchers behind the paper said that bigger, clinical trials would be required to confirm their findings, they believe that existing evidence of coffee’s benefit is “well established”. However, experts in the UK said that it was still not clear that coffee was directly responsible for the lower risk scores shown in the study.